Flower Power

A pop of color can make all the difference in a neighborhood, but one group of women has taken that to a new level.

Flowers planted and tended by Joan Copelin, Teri Rummel, and Diana Ross have made quite an impact around their cluster of apartments in Clarendon at the corner of Carhart and Montgomery streets.

The beautiful blooms have been a work in progress for about three years according to Ross.
Typically the grounds of the Clarendon Housing Authority are cared for by a paid employee, but these ladies take pride in caring for their yards and flowerbeds themselves as well as those of their immediate neighbors.

“Diana does the mowing,” Copelin said. “We like it mowed more often, and she catches the grass.”

Copelin said credit for the flowers at their complex really goes originally to Eva Turner, who developed a reputation for having beautiful lilies for more than 30 years. Taylor can no longer care for flowerbeds, but the ladies say she appreciates what they are doing.

Neighbors Glenda Day and Sybil Brown also enjoy and appreciate their efforts.

The beds are expanded or changed from time to time. A new bed of sunflowers was recently put in across the alley from the ladies’ apartments, spreading the beauty beyond the boundaries of their usual grounds.

There is no plan or guide to their annual flower gardens. The ladies just make it up on the fly and add rocks they pick up in different places for borders.

“If it grows, it grows; and if it doesn’t, we put something else out,” Ross said.